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like all the other she-cats, he could rid himself of his unexpected lust. Lust, of course, was all it was. He forgave Lillian for her fall. It was going to work right in with his plans. Yes, it was.

Chapter Four
    L illian was comfortably settled in a room in the small Ravine hospital. The doctor had ordered a series of tests—not because of her broken leg but because of her blood pressure reading taken in the emergency room.
    “Will she be all right, do you think?” Mari asked Ward as they waited for the doctor to speak to them. For most of the evening they’d been sitting in this waiting room. Ward paced and drank black coffee while Mari just stared into space worriedly. Lillian was her last living relative. Without the older woman she’d be all alone.
    “She’s tough,” Ward said noncommittally. He glared at his watch. “My God, I hate waiting! I almost wish I smoked so that I’d have something to help kill the time.”
    “You don’t smoke?” Mari said with surprise.
    “Never could stand the things,” he muttered. “Clogging up my lungs with smoke never seemed sensible.”
    Her eyebrows lifted. “But you drink.”
    “Not to excess,” he returned, glancing down at her. “I like whiskey and water once in a blue moon, and I’ll take a drink of white wine. But I won’t do it and drive.” He grinned. “All those commercials got to me. Those crashing beer glasses stick in my mind.”
    She smiled back a little shyly. “I don’t drink at all.”
    “I guess not, tenderfoot,” he murmured. “You aren’t old enough to need to.”
    “My dad used to say that it isn’t the age, it’s the mileage.”
    His eyebrows arched. “How much mileage do you have, lady?” he taunted. “You look and feel pretty green to me.”
    Her face colored furiously, and she hated that knowing look on his dark face. “Listen here, Mr. Jessup—”
    “Mr. Jessup.” His name was echoed by a young resident physician, who came walking up in a white coat holding a clipboard. He shook hands with Ward and nodded as he was introduced tersely to Mari.
    “She’ll be all right,” he told the two brusquely. “But I’d like to keep her one more day and run some more tests. She’s furious, but I think it’s for the best. Her blood pressure was abnormally high when we admitted her and it still is. I think that she might have had a slight stroke and that it caused her fall.”
    Mari had sudden horrible visions and went pale. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
    “I said, I think,” the young doctor emphasized and then smiled. “She might have lost her balance for a number of reasons. That’s why I want to run the tests. Even a minor ear infection or sinusitis could have caused it. I want to know for sure. But one thing’s certain, and that’s her attitude toward the high blood pressure medication she hasn’t been taking.”
    Ward and Mari exchanged puzzled glances. “I wasn’t aware that she had high blood pressure medication,” Ward said.
    “I guessed that,” the young doctor said ruefully. “She was diagnosed a few weeks ago by Dr. Bradley. She didn’t even get the prescription filled.” He sighed. “She seems to look upon it as a death sentence, which is absurd. It’s not, if she just takes care of herself.”
    “She will from now on,” Mari promised. “If I have to roll the pills up in steak and trick them into her.”
    The young resident grinned from ear to ear. “You have pets?”
    “I used to have a cat,” Mari confided. “And the only way I could get medicine into him was by tricking him. Short of rolling him up in a towel.”
    Ward glared at her. “That’s no way to treat a sick animal.”
    She lifted her thin eyebrows. “And how would you do it?”
    “Force his mouth open and shove the pills down his throat, of course,” he said matter-of-factly. “Before you say it,” he added when her mouth opened, “try rolling a half-ton bull in a towel!”
    The young doctor covered his mouth while Mari glared